You know when you're watching a movie and the bad guy is just the creepiest bad guy ever and you don't even want to watch the movie anymore because he creeps you out so much? (reference: Little Dorrit) And then someone always says that that's a sign of really great acting? Well, if the same is true for books then Dubus is a friggin' genius because the writing was so great that I wanted to put the book down the whole way through. Seriously folks, if Oprah endorses it then it's bound to be amongst the most depressingly soul-sucking novels ever written.

Due to a clerical error Kathy Nicolo is given minutes to move out of her childhood home, the house her father willed to her. The very next day Colonel Behrani buys it at auction for a third of it's value with plans to flip it for a profit. The Colonel was once a well respected and rich military officer in Iran until he fled to America to avoid execution. Now he is trying to regain some of the self-respect that he lost. Kathy is an ex-coke addict whose husband just deserted her. Along for the ride is Officer Lester Burdon who falls for Kathy, to his family's detriment, and will go to any length to get her her house back.

Of course, the inevitable is looming in the distance; a clash of pride and passion. The proverbial train wreck. No matter which way the pendulum swings it cannot be good. Except somehow the pace of the book got stuck on extra slow-mo. In 365 pages only about 20 of them have any action; at least, any action that made me want to stay awake to find out what happened next. Then the what-happened-next was particularly unsatisfying.

Gosh, it sounds a whole lot like another Oprah pick I dredged through once by the name of Vinegar Hill. I was more and more horrified by the idiocy of the characters and their penchant for making matters worse with each passing minute.

Clearly I hated the thing. I've heard the movie is true to the book in regards to the state it leaves the viewer in. Though I love Ben Kingsley (Love. Him.) I will give the adaptation a pass. ( )

I was almost instantly drawn into the lives of these characters. The plot is unusual and well-conceived and the writing well crafted. It is not, however, an upbeat book. It tells a tale of human error, pride, and greed, but tells it well enough so that I, at least, wanted to keep going to see how it all turned out. ( )

Wasn't really one of my favorites. I kept reading it hoping it would get better, but no such luck. All of the main characters were so selfish and immoral. It's no wonder everyone got hurt. ( )

Overwrought. ( )

Difficult read, was compelled to read it as it was chosen for my bookclub but under different circumstances I may have given up on it. The characters are unlikeable and difficult to relate to or sympathise with. Character development is good but too detailed. The book started off quite slowly and included copius amounts of internal dialogue by the three main characters. I definitely prefer the movie version although it is similarly somber and tragic. Throughout reading the book I kept wishing one of the characters would wake up and forsee the consequences of their selfish actions, but unfortunately they never did. ( )

An Iranian flees for his life with his family to America, taking menial jobs to support them and hiding this from his family, who are living beyond their means in the hopes that this will enable their daughter to marry well. He buys a house at auction for less than it’s worth, hoping that he can sell it for a profit, and sees his wife finally start smiling and blossoming in these new surroundings.

A woman is evicted from her house, after ignoring several letters from the tax office, due to a bureaucratic error.

One of the officers responsible for her eviction becomes concerned with her plight.

These three protagonists are realistically and sympathetically drawn. I found myself empathising with all three (as distinct, perhaps, from liking them). They make one stupid decision after the other, as their paths bring them into conflict with one another, but you can understand why they’re doing the things they do, even as things spiral more and more out of control.

The stream-of-consciousness style could be perceived as drawn-out and excessively detailed, but I actually found it very readable, and a good entree into the minds of each of the characters.

I realised while reading this book that one of the joys of reading, for me, is the way in which it allows me to get into the heads of people quite unlike me. This book was a success for me for this reason. ( )

I really did not like this book when I first started it. It took me about 100 pages to get into it, but after that, I found it okay. I thought it was very well-written. I wouldn't use the word enjoyable to describe this because it's an incredibly depressing book. It's hard for me to really say what I feel about this one. I guess I liked it but I had a lot of problems with the plausibility of many of the developments in the book (e.g. the romance between Kathy and Lester and pretty much everything about the ending). I really did not enjoy the ending but in a way, it seemed to be the inevitable conclusion. I can't really imagine another ending to this tragic tale. I don't know. I'm really confused about my feelings on this one. Perhaps it was just too unsettling for me to admit that I actually liked it more than I disliked it. ( )

Probably not the best book to be reading while in the process of purchasing a foreclosed home...
An error at the tax agency forces one woman, Kathy out of her house. At the same time a hard working Persian man, Behrani takes advantage of a house that has been auctioned off. Both main characters in this book are stubborn. Lester is the deputy who takes part of forcing Kathy out of her home. He has a wife and a father of two. He goes ga-ga for Kathy and will do anything and everything to get Kathy back in her home. Mr. Behrani is willing to sell back the home he purchased but only for a profit. Lester and Kathy are convinced that Behrani family is wealthy and does not need the house. The story switches back from Kathy and Behrani narrating. Kathy who is struggling and can barely afford to stay in cheap motorlodges ends up bunking up at a fishing cabin with Lester. She falls off the wagon and more trouble ensues. All of this could have been avoided if Kathy hadn't thrown away those notices from the tax bureau! ( )

I tend not to like books about people who seem incapable of making good decisions. And one of the characters in this book is definitely like that. She just never seems able (or willing) to take any responsible action. Realistic this may be, but it's also annoying.

Another main character, on the other hand, tends to make good decisions. Decisions that are responsible financially, good for his family, and on the right side of the law. And yet, things don't turn out well for him either.

If this is a book the purpose of which is to show how quickly things can spiral out of control, then it succeeds. Good decisions or bad, no-one wins here. Too many of us, who manage to have lives that are more or less in control, this is a valuable thing to learn about. But this is an awfully depressing education. ( )

Dark, but a good read. Insight into the life of a middle east immigrant in America. Lots to think about ( )

Man, there wasn't a single main character in this book that was at all likable. I realize that likable characters aren't a requirement, but while I finished it, I intensely disliked all three of them.

A very engrossing novel. The characters and their clashing cultures and mindsets are very detailed and almost spellbinding. I read this in a two day binge. The story concerns a dispute over a house that was seized for non-payment and then bought by an Irani family with the last of their money for an investment. The original owner inherited the house from her family but she loses it to the county after her husband abandons her. The third main character is the sheriff's deputy who falls in love with the owner and tries to help her get the house back. The tension is high throughout the story; you are never quite sure what to expect. Great read. ( )

Extraordinarily fascinating and extraordinarily depressing. Through a buerocratic error, two different people have a legitimate claim to the same house. Both characters are deeply flawed, but both sympathetic as well. If either gets the house, the other will be wronged. Enter a thrid character, a sherrif's deputy who is willing to do wrong for what he sees as the right ends, and we have a story that shows a very real and believable scenario of horrible events happening to people who don't deserve them, but can't escape them. ( )

Pretty much the worst book I've ever read. Not one of the characters deserves any sympathy from the reader. ( )

The ratio of “insanely depressing” to “well-written enough to be worth reading anyway” in this book tilts a bit much toward the former.

http://spwebdesign.livejournal.com/54... ( )

I didn't enjoy this at all. It's a simple plot but not simply told. The characters are interesting but do nothing interesting. ( )

This book could have been tighter towards the end; it gets a little bit predictable, and meanders to a close rather than ends. That aside, this is still an incredibly powerful piece of work. It's not a light book to get through; there are no heroes and there are very few innocents. Behrani, Kathy and Lester, three of the main characters of the novel, are all some of the most finely carved characters I've read in a long time. None of them are perfect; they are all fallible, none of them are even particularly likeable, to my mind. They are all however incredibly human, with a depth and complexity to their actions and reactions that feel utterly real.

The most important character of all isn't human at all, though. It's the eponymous house that Kathy loses and Behrani pins all his hopes on. It really is exactly like the title says, a house composed of ephemeral, shifting things, the things Kathy wants to hold on to and the things Behrani wants to achieve. There's a real sense of the house shifting what it is, of being all things and all times to all people, as the book progresses.

The prose is beautifully clear; not especially lyrical, but nicely fluid. Dubus also gets my approval for writing English from Behrani's perspective convincingly as the voice of someone who speaks English as their second language; he doesn't fall into cliches, but writes L1 interference convincingly, something which is all too rare. I'm definitely going to watch the movie adaptation if I get a chance, because I have the feeling that Jennifer Connolly and Ben Kingsley could make something truly wonderful out of source material as good as this ( )

Haunting characters and story. Outstanding read. ( )

At the beginning of House of Sand and Fog, a recovering alcoholic named Kathy is evicted from her California home. The Behranis, an Iranian immigrant family, buy the house at auction the next day. Kathy discovers her eviction was due to a clerical error, and launches a legal battle to regain ownership. The Behranis, of course, fight to keep what they now rightfully own. Meanwhile Kathy, recently abandoned by her husband, becomes entangled in a relationship with Lester, a married police officer who was present at her eviction. With each chapter the situation spirals more and more out of control. First, cultural misunderstandings abound: Kathy and Lester are frightened by the Behranis' ties to the Shah's regime, and the Behranis harbor resentment towards privileged, white Americans. Second, every main character makes a mess of their personal relationships through poor communication and allowing their egos to get in the way.

This ominous, tense, and gritty novel reads like a Shakespearean tragedy. While there are many opportunities for the characters to improve their situation, they repeatedly fail to do so. Each character's flaws are glaringly obvious, and none of them are particularly likeable. As the reader, this made me distance myself emotionally from the plot, remaining on the sidelines watching the characters careen towards the inevitable disaster. This book is well-written but I tend to prefer novels where I can be more emotionally committed to the outcome. ( )

Wow, how do you sum up the emotions that this book churns up?
A friend asked me if I liked the book and I couldn't answer her. A good book, in my opinion, is a story that makes you want to read nonstop, you are obsessed with the characters, you know the characters as well as you know your friends and when the book is over you wish that you had just one more chapter....... Well this book had all of that, BUT.... How depressing can a story be? My heart broke for every single character in the story. Every person lost everything because of a house!!!!! I actually lost sleep thinking about these people. ( )

3500. House of Sand and Fog, by Andre Dubus III (read Nov 14 2001) I guess I had heard so much about this that I thought I should read it. It was high-interest reading, and I thought carefully constructed though improbable. Maybe it is a bit soap-opera-ey, but actually I thought it kind of a classic account of fated folk. Perhaps improbably, I thought of Madame Bovary as I was reading. The legal aspects of the plot were not very subtle and seemed not carefully attended to: since the house was jointly owned, I doubt the county would have sold the house as quickly as the storyline had it doing. I looked at some of the 287 reviews on Amazon after I finished the book, and some of the negative reviews make good points. ( )

Other than the mistakes on local phrases (Frisco? Referring to highways with their names rather than numbers?), this book was a really compelling read. I wasn't happy with how it turned out, but I enjoyed it for the most part. ( )

The dust jacket calls this novel: "...a masterstroke of American realism and Shakespearean consequence. It is an American tragedy, and a shockingly true picture of the country we live in today."

American, yes. Tragic and Shakespearean? OK. Shocking? Sorta. "True picture of the country we live in today"? I'm not quite buying it.

I knew what I was in for when I picked this up off of my to-read shelf. I've been told. It's depressing, it's a rough time. I spent the first half of the novel kind of hating the characters, and the second half scratching my head and waiting for the nightmare's outcome. And what a fantastic nightmare! This book's denouement lasts a good third of the book and never really lets up.

What drove me to distraction was the characters, the exposure of what was their inner voices and motivations. There's Kathy Nicolo, our female protagonist, who plays lassez-faire with her life and seems continually surprised when things happen in the real world. There's the cop, who I just can't quite believe: leaving his wife and kids and effectively going on a crime spree (I'll leave the resolution to the reader here).

The Iranian family in the middle of this represent the most interesting characters to me, though the ex-military, honor-obsessed father figure is not who I'm really talking about. The sweet teenage kid and the wife--whose role as both Iranian wife and American resident are pretty much an impossible combination--make parts of this book glow with humanity.

But back to "shockingly true picture of the country we live in today." I, naive as I may be, don't feel this is the case. Two things. One minor: this book seems markedly dated. I kept looking back at the flyleaf to verify that it was indeed copyrighted 1999. It felt like it was from the 80s, repeatedly talking about "cassette tapes" and really bad outfits. But the thing that blew me over was how quickly every major character in the book devolved into class and ethnic hatred at the drop of a hat. Perhaps I'm just "enlightened", but that, uh, never happens to me, or anyone I know. I guess I'm over-simplifying here, but maybe I'm living in a different segment of American reality? ( )

I thoroughly enjoyed this novel and never imagined its tragic end. A haunting story that has no real winners. ( )